When Simon Purvis, executive chef at EDGE, the popular restaurant in the Four Seasons Denver, stepped off the United Airlines Dreamliner at Denver International Airport at 1:30 p.m. last Thursday after having flown 12 hours from Tokyo, he headed straight to the Denver Zoo.

EDGE was doing the food for the VIP party at Do At The Zoo and, according to Four Seasons Denver publicist Dana Berry, Purvis wanted to be sure the lamb sliders, crab cocktails and other tasty tidbits were perfect and ready to be served to the folks who’d paid a premium to arrive an hour ahead of everyone else.

Do At The Zoo 2013 had 3,000 guests, and chairwoman Kate Magner said the $700,000 that was raised will further the zoo’s award-winning sustainability efforts. In 2011, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums designated Denver Zoo as the nation’s greenest.

Chairing Do At The Zoo, Magner said, was “a great way to start my board service. I was elected to the board in December and this put me right into the trenches.”

The food boths were set up throughout the zoo, so any extra calories could be justified by the amount of walking it took to go from, say, Toyota Elephant Passage to Bird World or Giraffe Meadows.

And should all that walking make a body thirsty, there were plenty of stops where adult beverages were served. The Made in Colorado specialty liquor booth, for example, or Whiskeys of the World. If a cold beer held more appeal, the Great Divide Brewing Co. was serving the suds from a canopy situated next to ones staffed by Relish Catering & Events and the MouCo Cheese Company.

Joanne Davidson was The Denver Post's society editor for 29 years before retiring in July 2015. She quickly discovered she wasn't ready for the rocking chair, so she dusted off her evening gowns and returned to the paper as a freelance reporter, writing feature stories and covering charitable fundraising events in the metro area.